1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and particularly to a shielded modular receptacle connector.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Modular connectors are widely used to provide electrical connections between devices, for example, connections between the telephones and the telephone switch at the central office and connections between computer equipment. Computer connections, however, are susceptible to noise due to the high frequency signal transmission involved. The susceptibility to noise (or electromagnetic interference (EMI)) is particularly severe at the connecting portion since shielding continuity for the signal path is interrupted at that site. It is for this reason that modular connectors are constructed with shields encasing the housing of the modular connector.
However, the external shield encasing the housing of the modular receptacle connector conventionally covers a very small portion at a bottom surface of the housing which abuts against the printed circuit board the modular receptacle connector is mounted to, therefore, reliable EMI shielding can not be ensured. In addition, the portion of the external shield covering the bottom surface of the housing is prone to warp and the gaps at connecting joints of the conventional external shield are too large to prevent EMI from entering the connector via these gaps, thereby further decreasing the EMI shielding effectiveness of the modular connector. On the other hand, the conventional external shield provides only a few grounding pins depending downwardly from a periphery of the bottom thereof, which do not reliably meet the demand for grounding the shielding of the modular connector to effectively dissipate the noise received by the shielding.
Therefore, an improved modular connector is desired to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.